Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, is bringing his legal and substance-abuse experience to the cannabis issue. Goodman has introduced two bills this week affecting the state’s cannabis laws. And next week cannabis takes center stage in three hearings of the Legislature.
House Bills 1482 and 1597, sponsored by Goodman, are similar only in their mention of cannabis. You have to plow throw 20 pages of HB 1482, an act relating to provisions that address impaired driving, before you come across the section pertaining to a zero-tolerance level for cannabis in the blood tests of commercial vehicle drivers. No one wants big-rig operators intoxicated on any substance, but it is interesting that of all substances, including alcohol and legally prescribed pharmaceuticals, only cannabis is marked for zero=tolerance. The bill sets the permissible blood-concentration level at zero for tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. The state’s new recreational use law, I-502, sets a 5.00 nanogram per milliliter level for intoxication of people over 21.
HB 1597, Goodman’s second bill, is a “technical” change bill for MMJ, and it actually is a…technical change.
Three hearings are scheduled for next week. The House Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing with a work session on cannabis and impaired driving in the “post I-502 world” at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. It also will feature a general review of I-502, “what is legal” and what is “still legal.” Expect information about driving while intoxicated, “roadside to courthouse,” and the science of “cannabis and impaired driving.”
The Senate Health Care Committee plans a strangely described hearing on cannabis Monday at 10 a.m. It will cover SJM 8000, by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, her memorial asking the feds to recognize MMJ laws in Washington. But an announcement for the work session at the same hearing states, “I-502: Medical Marijuana.” I-502 is not the MMJ law in Washington; it is the newly passed recreational use law. Typo?
And if have you an interest in the revenue side of cannabis, stop in the House Finance Committee on the 8th at 8 a.m.
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